How to Deal With Itsy Bitsy Promotional Product Imprints

You’re looking through a promotional product website or catalog and you see a product you’re interested in. You imagine your logo emblazoned on it big, bold and beautiful. Then you look at the imprint area which is 3/4″ square. What? Yep, that’s small, even if it’s shown as huge in the extreme closeup photo.

Just to give you a dose of reality, take out a ruler right now and measure off 3/4″. Now imagine your logo shrunk down to that size. Is it still legible? In many cases, when logos are shrunk down to less than 1″, they become almost unidentifiable except with the use of a magnifying glass.

However, this is the reality you must deal with for many itsy bitsy imprints such as those on golf balls, golf tees and ball markers, pens, keytags, lapel pins, and the like. Sure, today’s imprinting technologies, including digital printing, can achieve logo imprints that were next to impossible in years past. But remember that you want your imprint to be identifiable from a normal viewing distance.

So keep these guidelines in mind as you prepare artwork for the itsy bitsy imprint situations:

Ditch Text, Keep Graphic Elements – If you have a logo that includes both graphic elements and text, ditch the text when faced with a small imprint area. I realize that there are logos that are text treatments and do not have any shape elements in them. In that case you might want to just isolate the first letter in your company name or use an acronym. Ask your graphic designer to suggest some alternatives for limited space that maintain your branding.
Only Use Text – This may sound contradictory to the above, but if faced with extreme size limitations, you might opt for just plain text. Your promotional product distributor can provide you with the number of characters that are available for your imprint. For example, one of my regular clients has quite a large logo. When they buy golf tees from me, which have an imprint area of 3/8″ x 1-3/8″, we opt for the text only option which gives them up to 3 lines of text, 24 characters per line.
Size Matters – While most modern day imprinting processes can produce some amazingly detailed small imprints, there is a limit to how low you can go in terms of text size. Typically, text sizes of 5 to 8 points are about the smallest you can go, but it depends on the imprint area, the surface material it’s going on, as well as the ink and equipment being used. Your promotional product distributor can advise you of what’s possible.
Choose Product and Imprint Colors to Match Your Branding – So you don’t have enough space to use your snazzy full color logo and you have to go with a text-only imprint. Match the product and/or imprint colors you use to blend in with your branding to still get some of the effect.
Contrast Helps – When choosing product and imprint colors, make sure there is sufficient contrast between the two. Helps the readability when the size shrinks.